Those are called “Fundamentalist Mormons”. We’re honestly kinda ashamed of them, because you just know the second they get arrested for their polygamy(and their treatment of their wives, in several cases), it’s it’s every single “flavor” of the LDS church that gets tarred with the “OMG, look at these horrible Mormons!” brush. Also, hi Gdragon! 🙂

@Kernanator: Kind of, in a round-about “we’re alike in that we came from the same roots” way, but as gangler’s noting, very much not in the “the LDS church has an Article of Faith* that basically says, ‘thou shalt follow the laws of thy land and be a good citizen’ “(abridged version I think you could call my summary.) It’s why there’s, as Eddie Izzard noted, a bit of a “crowbar separation, there.” Polygamists? Yeah, definitely not us. *wince*

Polygamy was NEVER legal in any part of the united states. The early mormons were as lawless originally as any of their spinoffs are today – possibly moreso. So even though most mormons today are basically lawful, criticism by them of other polygamous spinoff religions for lawlessness still sound hypocritical and/or woefully ignorant to me.

Actually Polygamy had an important function. the chrch and its ideals tended to attract women and since it start in a time when women not only where not considered a people able to make their own decisions but where barely considered people to allow the new members of the church the right to move they had to be married. And there where more women than men. So they allowed men to have more than 1 wife so he women could travel. Then the land they settled in wasn’t a part of the united states and was a lawless territory meaning their laws where the laws of man. Once they became and important part of intercontental trade and after it was no longer needed to help women settle with the church they dropped it to accept the laws of the country they knew they where going to a part of. Some people didnt want o leave second wives as single mother so didnt seperate from them and in most cases relocated them help populate other fledgling states like arizona.
Thus while it is not legal and is not allowed by the church polygamy was an important part of american and church history.

Years-belated note: Most of Slicey’s post is misinformation. (Albeit misinformation that is widely spread in the mormon church, and Slicey was no doubt repeating it innocently.)

1) Censuses show that there were always more men than women in the mormon church, during the times polygamy was practiced. This left young women struggling to get a single wife, while church leaders would accumulate several.
2) I know of nothing indicating that women were not allowed to travel on their own, particularly as part of a wagon train. Not that there were surplus women anyway.
3) All land the mormons traveled in was claimed by Mexico at the time of their arrival, and only one year later was won by the US in the Mexican War. In both countries polygamy was illegal. There has never been a time when polygamous mormons weren’t breaking the law of the country they resided in.
4) Mormons (well, mormon leaders) clung to polygamy with a vicelike grip. It was still official practice over thirty years after the government started cracking down.

These facts can be independently verified. This is all I wanted to say.

@begbert2
Checked, and at least one major area of your facts needs updating:

Polygamy wasn’t universally forbidden in the United Status until the Morill Anti-Bigamy act of 1862, long after it began to be practiced among Latter-Day Saints (LDS here to distinguish from the smaller RLDS and FLDS sects). Once the law was instituted, LDS leaders challenged it in the courts on the grounds that it was a violation of religious freedom, a process which took decades. Once the Supreme Court finally ruled to uphold the act, the church abandoned the practice in 1890. Despite aggressive enforcement attempts by federal marshals and so forth, the “outlaw” claim doesn’t really characterize LDS activity on the question of polygamy.

Either that, or we’re just the most observed case of this, mostly compliments of the United States.

Having the option of balkanizing our faith of one of the general reasons people of the 13 colonies followed the Founding Fathers’ whole independence venture in the first place.

The People are a heavily multiplied “Me” and
anyone who tells you different is either a fool who didn’t learn from history and is damned to repeat it, or someone who DID learn from history and plans to cash in on what they learned using their fool counterparts for that very purpose.

They also no longer believe that being black means you have no soul. It’s good when a religion can adapt to acceptable behavioral patterns. Now how long do you think it will be before the ginger issue gets resolved? :-p

It could be argued that they never really did. The whole anti-black thing sort of came in from the side. There were some very well respected black men in the early church, and their line persisted for a while outside of peoples racism that game in later.

It’s true, Mormons decided to no longer believe in Joseph Smith’s 1843 revelation. This happened shortly after the passing of the Edmunds-Tucker act, which would have allowed the seizure of church property if their leaders practiced polygamy.

They also started admitting black people to the priesthood in 1978, thanks to a timely revelation just a few years before the Supreme Court started revoking tax-exempt status for discrimination under the Civil Rights Act.

There were actually black priesthood holders before that too. There was an entire line of priesthood holders who were black who had received the priesthood from Joseph Smith, who continued to give the priesthood to their descendants and be in good church standing, in spite of general policy of the time.

As far as polygamy, anyone who’s read the Book of Mormon should know that it was never supposed to be a permanent thing anyways.

Her mannerisms may be largely similar to Mormon manners, but I think that probably her biggest issue with Mormonism would simply be the Book of Mormon, which she would undoubtedly consider heretical (or at least apocryphal).

Either way, I look forward to Joyce doing some growing emotionally.

(By the way, I’m not commenting on the polygamy thing, because it looks like Zanosuke Kurosaki pretty much has that covered.)

okay just to clear this up. We do not practice polygamy, we are not a cult, we are Christians and we are normal people. We believe that all other churches such as the catholic church, Lutherinism, Bhudism, Shintoism, and all other religions are good and that we simply have more revelation to add. For more info visit lds.org

Languages tend to change when groups move around.
The process which created the American dialect is the
same process which created all the Latin based languages
in Europe. New people were met, notes were exchanged,
and everyone walked away from the encounter a little
different. That’s saying nothing of the culture affecting
language vs. the language affecting culture debate.
Thus it is no fairer to call American English a
“debasement” of the original English (which itself has
changed drastically over the years anyway) than it would
be to call French or Italian a “debasement” of Latin.

That being said, “cult” and “religion” are indeed different
terms, intended to mean different things, and with
different implications.

The production of the film had some ties to the church, not least the involvement of Travolta. I understand some of the “profits” went to Scientology backed groups. They also backed the film with marketing, not that it did much good.

The thing is they aren’t really all that different than devout Protestants or Baptists, but once again when the details and particulars of one faith come up and certain people can’t accept even the smallest deviation you get conflict.

Ah recruiters, I’m kinda the reason why the Mormon and Jehovah stopped coming to my building. not do to complaint or lawsuit but due to the fact that they woke me up and the only thing I was wearing was my pentacle pendant. I did that unintentionally by the way, I’m not a moring person what ever hour it is.

I had a couple of Mormon’s on their mission, originally from Utah, move in next door to me when I was a kid. They were really nice and brought us cookies. After my dad told them he didn’t want to talk about religion, they never showed up again.

But if you want to marry someone of the same sex in California, you can’t, largely with the help of the Mormon Church which spent millions of dollars to get Prop 8 passed, and had thousands of Mormons volunteering their time to support the ballot initiative.

I generally don’t have a problem with Mormons individually. Most I’ve met have been polite and friendly, even knowing everything about me. I respect that and appreciate it.

But the leaders of that Church are loathsome creatures, and there’s enough Mormons who hate homosexuals that with their money and support they were able to get California to vote against the LGBT community.

Interesting thing, by the way. Members of the LDS church are very strongly counseled that if they’re going to get involved in politics, do *NOT* go into it saying they “have the full backing of the church”, or anything that remotely comes close to it. So any time you see the name “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” on any sort of list supporting some political cause or another, it’s not there because of the leadership. It’s there *because* some individual is an arrogant toerag that completely ignores what someone else told them. =\

Prop 8 WAS an exception to that, though. It’s true that the church as whole never endorses a political candidate, but it does move for particular policy issues, and it absolutely did so for Prop 8, in a very public way.

The thing is that it was never about prejudice against LGBTs, at least not originally. It was very simply about the fact that heterosexual marriage is an important doctrinal point that the church wasn’t willing to give up. Sometimes a culture war is inevitable, when it comes to politics.

As CP says, the movement against Cali’s Prop 8 was, without a doubt, sponsored and led by church leadership.

“Along with evangelical Christian groups such as Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, the leaders of Roman Catholic, Mormon, Southern Baptist, Orthodox Jewish and Seventh-Day Adventist congregations have endorsed the measure and urged the faithful to give.”http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-24-1821135519_x.htm

“Three church leaders spoke in a satellite broadcast last night about the need for California Mormons to get involved. Elder Quinton L. Cook, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, says the church feels obligated to defend traditional marriage.”http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4479655

Contributions from the Mormon church amounted from 33% to 40% of the total amount donated in support of Proposition 8.

The Church of Latter-Day Saints spent millions of dollars and encouraged thousands of members to volunteer their time in order to amend California’s constitution to make it illegal for same-sex couples to get married.

I won’t even bother getting into the ties between LDS and the National Organization for Marriage.

California isn’t exactly a full Blue State either, so the mistake at issue here is that they weren’t mainstream/”normal” enough a homophobic group like the 60-67% of the rest of the Prop. 8 supporters, yes?

You’d be surprised how much money the Mormon Church gives to the boy scouts of america. That money amounts to influence, and it’s a large reason that the Boy Scouts absolutely will not accept openly gay or atheist scouts.

Then again my dad grew up thinking he wouldn’t be allowed to hold the priesthood because of the color of his skin. Who even knows what goes through the head of someone joining a church where they’ll pretty much be a second-class citizen.

In a word? Yes. Gays and atheists are not allowed to hold any position of authority in BSA, and they are not allowed to be members of the troop. If BSA finds out that your troop has been doing these things, they will give you one warning to boot them all, and if it isn’t followed immediately, they will take away your troop’s charter.

The major irony here being, of course, that Robert Baden Powell, the founder, was almost definitely a closeted homosexual.

Scouts Canada recieved more complaints when it started to admit women then when it started to openly admit homosexuals.

Honestly, I concur. Men should start helping themselves by studying being male the way feminism helps women understand what being female means to them. Scouts and Guides are really great outlets for that.

A longer term guider (20 years) told me she would accept only boys who identified as female gender.

Sad, but true. My brother had to to teach his son, my nephew, to lie about our family’s atheism in order for him to join the scouts so he could hang out with his friends. Another boy had already been kicked out because the scoutmaster found out his parents were atheists.

Way, way, back in the day, the boy scouts were about friendship, teamwork, and honor. In recent years fundamentalists have taken over the scouts, and now scouts & troop leaders can be banished for not believing the right things.

I mean, c’mon. 8 year-olds don’t really understand religion, but they’re being punished because their parents don’t belong to the right religion – or any religion.

that saying has always bugged the shit out of me, because when you look at how vastly different the teachings of any religious sect can be (regardless of how connected their roots are) it’s pretty hard to say it’s the same guy/girl/thing up there for all of us when what’s frowned upon in one group could very well be encouraged in another.

ya, ya, i know it’s just a way to try and cut off religious debates, but it’s completely void when you’re even partially analytical on the matter.

personally i try to be unbiased on the matter, despite some admittedly ignorant views on Christianity that i’m trying to get over.

See, here’s the thing. Most forms of Christianity focus on texts recorded by people. So when a new text descends from the sky, completely unlike any other one we ever recieved, and no one has been allowed to see these amazing “golden tablets,” it gets people suspicious.

There’s a reason the Bible relies mostly on eyewitness accounts. What’s more likely, that we’re worshipping the same deity, or that it was easier to start a cult by saying it’s the same as Christianity?

Not to say it’s a cult NOW, but when it started? With everyone gathering up and moving away from the rest of civilization, doing everything their “prophet” said, and never seeing the magic tablets that started this whole thing?

If their tenants are good now, that’s great, but they did have to get rid of a big deviancy they started with. Saying “they’re the same” doesn’t really work.

I mean yeah, when a man tells you he talks to god directly, tells a story about a bunch of people discovering America with a guest appearance by Christ, and then follows that up with a request that you sign over all your property to him, quit your job, join his militia and live in his commune outside the laws of society, that certainly sounds like a cult.

People were talking Christian Bale and you walked in with a statement about Adam West. So long as people are listing Batman as an antihero in the present tense his antics in the sixties don’t really make the statement stop working.

Are you now trying to inform me that a particular set of stories about the European god of the dark ages might be false? If so I have some equally valuable info for you. Why it turns out that the stories about the Norse Pantheon published by Marvel Comics never really happened at all. That Stan Lee tells some tall tales you know. I hear that’s not even his real name.

That rapscallion totally had me convinced that Thor wore an outfit eerily reminiscent of the Greek God Hermes and was a beardless natural blond. Can you believe it? Absurd. Why everybody knows that Thor had a fierce red beard when he walked through Middle Earth. It says so right in the Heimskringla. Certainly doesn’t make any mention of a brief detour to fight evil alongside a group of mortal warriors who called themselves The Avengers.

Genesis? Noah’s flood? Exodus? None of which actually happened. Even the gospels were written decades after the events they claim to describe, and they talk about things the authors couldn’t possibly have seen (the nativity, etc.).

Hardly any of it is an eyewitness account, it’s mostly just stories, second (third, fourth…) hand information, and advice.

Considering you’re talking about… 6 books out of 66, and that at least 1 of them (Matthew) was based on eyewitness information, and Mark might have been mostly or completely taken from Peter’s knowledge (mark), I would say “MOSTLY” still stands. Stuff like the historical books, the prophetic books, and the books that compiled history as it went, like Deuteronomy (maybe. It seems to have been written over a long period of time, but there’s not exactly textual confirmation), all have eyewitness information. Then there’s the books that don’t really need eyewitness stuff, like… well, all of the Wisdom books.

Besides, when you’re arguing about what is and isn’t based off of eyewitness information, do you think saying “None of which actually happened” is helpful? Or has a point at all? You could easily say that the books were written long after they occured, which would be something unarguably true, instead of just your belief. Saying what you said is less of an argument and more just trying to be rude.

And, considering my real argument (that people wrote the Bible, and that’s important in Christianity, while the Book of Mormon fell out of the sky), yeah. It still is that different.

Matthew was not written from eye-witness information. Both it and Luke were written from Mark, and Mark was still written decades after Jesus had died.

There is also very little historical information in the Old Testament. You can basically throw out everything earlier than King Josiah. There was never a united kingdom of both Judah and Israel. Never existed. King David and King Solomon never presided over a huge empire. They were at most chieftans of a tiny backwater city-state called Jerusalem, living entirely in the shadow of the larger nation to the north, a territory King Josiah envied. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Methuselah, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Samuel… these were all tall tales, stories passed down through the ages like Paul Bunyan, and eventually twisted into a nationalist narrative for King Josiah’s political gain.

Believing in it is roughly the same as believing that a lost tribe of Israelites became the Native Americans and Jesus visited them. Neither occurred. Both are falsehoods which can be disproven with archeological evidence.

(Or, if you will, require the same amount of faith and suspension of disbelief.)

I figgered that was a given when I mentioned Moses in the list of legend-like figures. And, yeah, at the time of the Exodus, Egypt actually owned all of Canaan. There wasn’t a free Canaan for the Israelites to escape to and conquer without the Egyptians, y’know, caring very much. The Hebrews were always in Canaan, and slowly became a cohesive people over time. And along the way they made up some emasculating stories about Egypt to kick a declining empire while it was down.

Believing the books of the bible are “mostly” based on eyewitness accounts is just as silly as believing some deity planted dinosaur fossils or manipulated carbon atoms to “test your faith”.

Also, all of the differing sects of Islam have only one Qur’an, like all of the differing sects of Christianity have only one bible. Mormons have an entire book – that none of the other Christian sects have – which includes guest appearances by Jesus, some angels, and says Native Americans were cursed by god.

Yes, Matthew was written after Mark. But it has 230 verses in common with Luke, both of which were written approximately around the same time, and Luke noted in his gospel that he ran around doing all the research he could. Considering how unlikely it is that Matthew and Luke met each other, and how much they have in common with each other that isn’t in Mark, it’s hard to say Matthew was just “based on” Mark.

Also, books like 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicles do cite some sources as court history. Plus, even going all the way up to Josiah’s reign (and I still think saying everything before was propaganda is taking a huge leap, since he was 8 when he became a king and only lived to be 39 – that’s not a whole lot of time to do all that considering how hard it was to make copies but whatever), that’s still only…11 books? Maybe 13? Considering that the prophetic texts talk about events going on while they were being written (though some, like Isaiah, were over a long period of time by different authors). Putting the 17 prophetic books together with at the very least, Esther (since it was taken from a text written by Mordecai), and tossing the Wisdom lit aside because it really doesn’t matter one way or the other – it has nothing to do with current events or history or whatever – I would say “mostly” does still fit, and that’s not even getting into the New Testament.

But I will, anyway. Hebrews is the only one of Paul’s letters that seems to be mostly agreed that it was not actually written by Paul. But then, it’s anonymous, so I’m kind of confused as to why anyone thought he wrote it regardless. The others have a lot of evidence towards Paul writing them, and most disputes come up over new words or shifts in writing style. But considering he was traveling and seems to at least examine the culture around him when he visits, at least by looking at Acts, it’s possible that he learned as he went. Irenaeus, a scholar later on, did a lot of research while these texts were still “fresh,” has writings that are generally accepted as evidence for the authorship of Matthew, Mark, and most of Paul’s letters, excluding Hebrews.

Peter’s letters are also somewhat disputed, but, like most of Paul’s, also have a lot of other people backing them up. The John letters, while obviously not written by the disciple John, were more likely written by “John the Evangelist,” who was around for most of the church events he was writing about.

It seems like there are at least 23 books of the New Testament that at the very least have a fair amount of evidence supporting that they were around when the stuff they wrote about was happening. With the Old Testament books mentioned earlier, that’s 41 out of 66. I would say “mostly” still counts.

However, once again, EVERYONE ignored what I first said. The Book of Mormon supposedly came out of nowhere on magic golden plates, which no one saw aside from Joseph Smith. That’s entirely different from every Christian text, and so to say that Mormonism is the same thing as Christianity is ridiculous. Instead of focusing on the main idea of what I said, you took four words and turned them into a huge argument.

Also, completely off topic, is anyone else having issues with their text going outside of the box when they’re trying to type it? I can’t see half of the stuff I’m writing, so there may be spelling errors.

Way more than Hebrews is widely considered inauthentic. A majority of scholars agree that both Timothys and Titus were forgeries. It’s also very likely Paul didn’t write Ephesians, Colossians, or 2 Thessalonians, for a number of very important reasons.

Peter couldn’t have written anything because there’s no way a fisherman would have been literate, much less literate in Greek.

And, no, there isn’t much difference between what Christians choose to believe and what Mormons choose to believe. Just because theirs is more recent doesn’t make it any more ridiculous. King Josiah pulled an entire fake history of a unified Israel out of some rubble, a history that had “prophesies” in it about how a “King Josiah” would be the greatest thing since King David, which is amazingly convenient. That’s not different at all from Joseph Smith finding golden tablets which only he can read. And the Gospels are full of things that people at the time would have known couldn’t have happened. A census that didn’t occur and according to rules given which would have made no logical sense. A killing of all the first-borne that nobody else recorded. These were all made up whole-cloth out of nothing, no different from a pair of golden plates.

The only difference is time. People were as incredulous about Christianity’s claims in its early days as people are about Mormons now, and for identical reasons. If you’re going to have faith that these things really did occur, you can’t look down your nose at other people for doing the exact same thing.

See, personally, I haven’t got the slightest problem with Mormons. I have a problem with Mormonism, but only insomuch as If anyone tries to convince me of it, I will argue back. The only real problem I have with the religion over others is the rather huge, fundamental contradictions it has with the Bible, while claiming to believe the Bible.

Matt Stone was raised Jewish i believe he is an atheist or an agnostic though i am not a 100% sure i don’t know what religion trey Parker was raised i believe he may be catholic only because Stan Marsh is and he is supposed to be based on Trey Parker but i do know he was at least raised christian i don’t know which denomination

Hey! Try to have a little civility there, okay? There is no reason to insult us here as I doubt any of us Mormons on the board have done anything to you, much less met you. Take your hatred elsewhere please. We’re people too.

Hoo Nelly! I swear you can ask any man over 21 in the ward about the Baptists and they will just immediately start launching into stories from their missionary years without skipping a beat. Nobody finishes a mission without getting a couple Baptist stories under their belt.

I was a missionary in Hong Kong. One day this huge white dude comes walking up to my companion and I and asks if he can share a scripture with us, then immediately proceeds to read Galatians 1:9 and from there moves into an amazing rant, in which he cast devils out of me, condemned me to hell, and physically ripped a copy of the Book of Mormon from my hand and through it over a balcony before mall security came walking up and he took off.

Apparently the guy also used to show up when new missionaries arrived and would walk near them on the path from the MTR to the government office where you got your HK ID card and spout invective.

I dated a Mormon for two years, and have basically the same religion Joyce described yesterday. We broke up when he went on his mission, but during the time we dated, we had many very healthy, thought-provoking conversations/ attempts to convert each other, and for the larger part found strength and depth in our own faiths by being challenged by each other. The Mormon and the Baptist CAN be friends.

I found that the more serious mormons tend to be pretty tolerant and humble, the intolerant ones tend to to be the vocal fringe.
(I spent quite some time as a member of the church, and they were all lovely people.)

It will be a freakout of EPIC proportions. There will be many deaths and even more injuries. There will be a several day stand-off with the police. The SWAT team will get involved. And at the end of it all, everyone will puzzle over the possible meaning of her last words:

Same goes for the bullcrap about that Hutt in a human-suit Pontius Pilate giving Jesus a fair trial, or being a paragon of Roman values in any way.

Annnnd Jesus being a white guy with a light brown mullet of straight tresses,a petite nose, and unmarried.

Don’t get me started on the Rapture, or the idea that the Torah and the Quran can’t possibly be pieces of the same puzzle the Bible’s part of.

Taking the first few chapters of Genesis as literal and not parable is also a lot like trying to make sense of Neon Genesis Evangelion as a straight sci-fi and not an abstract one full of metaphors. It’s a good window toward self-inflicted confusion.

Sorry, in the end, Romney will answer for Romney. We take no responsibility for whatever screw-ups he’s made (for example, that tax return he showed, where he paid less in taxes than he donated in his yearly tithing? I can imagine there are some church higher-ups giving him quite a bit of a verbal reaming for that one…)

My mom hates mormons. A while before I was born, she was in the Peace Corp in Brazil, and the local mormon missionaries ended up offending most of the locals with their “how dare you call us racists!” style of racism. And then they falsely claimed to be affiliated with mom’s group, which got some of the locals pissed at *them* as well.

Mom has never stopped holding that grudge. Can’t say I blame her, really.

*facepalm* Yeaaaah… those two obviously should’ve had a lot more of an in-depth interview before they got sent out on their mission. They do a much more thorough job these days on making sure the people they’re sending out, aren’t utterly unprepared and incapable of dealing with everything not being white-bread. And of making dead certain that they know *not* to go making statements about who is affiliated with who. Sorry your mom ran across a couple of idiots, Shade. 🙁

Also, now that my brain has caught up with my fingers:
I should say, not “who is affiliated with who”, but “making statements they are *NOT* qualified to make, such as who belongs to what.” There. now I’m accurate with what I meant.

I’m a convert, myself. Met a nice lady online, ended up getting curious when she told me she was LDS, and just ended up investigating myself. Been a member almost 10 years, now. And the irony of my investigating and joining were the rather… “choice” comments I recall making to someone about 3 years previous (I wasn’t very good at thinking for myself, but rather, just kind of blindly accepted what I was told, for a while there… >.>) Sure, I was a teenager, but I don’t think that’s too much of a reason or excuse. x.x

Five of us, actually! Corvus and Mr. Sitouh are too, if I’m reading things rightly.

I think it’s like an ignorant or dickish version of racism. The jist of it is that your ignorantly or perposely racist and than whenever anyone calls you on it you say they are racist for saying your racist. Like thinking that because they say you are racist means that your entire race is racist or something like that. Thats my best way of describing it.

1) Make racially coded comments.
Ex: “And so I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps,” sayeth the Newt. (I’m sorry, that’s not even coded…)

2) Get called out on previous statement.
Ex: “Can’t you see this is viewed at a minimum insulting to all Americans, but as particularly to African Americans?” asked by Juan Williams at GOP debate 1/16/2012.

3) Respond with more code to the effect of, “No, you’re racist, I’m trying to help these people.”
Ex: “I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness. And if that makes liberals unhappy, I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job and learn some day to own the job.” Replied the reptile. I’m sorry, amphibious American.

If you need an Enigma to decode that last statement, I would suggest submitting it to yoisthisracist.com.

SpuriousDefenseInitiative describes a pretty good example immediately above of the “how dare you call us racists!” style of racism. The general idea is, either knowingly or ignorantly say something racist (it can be as innocuous as the phrase “you people”), and when called on it, act like you are the one being insulted. There are many variations of this general theme.

Perfect on-topic example: the Mormon church used to be an explicitly whites-only group, and non-whites could only join after being made “honorary whites”. I wish I was joking, but, while I don’t know whether it’s true anymore, it definitely used to be. Despite this being quite obviously and blatantly racist, the Mormons of the day would have angrily insisted that it wasn’t because, after all, it was God’s law. “How dare you call us racist! We’re obeying the commandments of God!”

I’m surprised Joyce just happens to be coming across so many residents up for joining the group. Though now that I think about it, anyone who’s not would still be asleep like Billie, so I guess the probability of running into other churchgoers in the hall at this point is pretty high.

THe only thing in this comic I find worthy of outrage or comment is the fact that Agatha’s church is okay with her wearing pants. The few times I’ve been to Mormon church I was told very explicitly to wear a skirt.

There are a couple of fundamentalist groups in rural Idaho and places like that, comprising a couple thousand people total, who are defined by their insistence on practicing polygamy. There’s the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, comprising a couple hundred thousand people, mostly based around Missouri, who are practically Baptist – their beliefs are barely divergent from Protestantism at all. Then there’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with some 7 million members, which are centered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The groups are in no way affiliated with each other, and find each other quite objectionable, and would prefer not to be identified with the other groups at all. Anyone who held the beliefs of a fundamentalist Mormon would be basically immediately excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So calling them sects is problematic. It’d be like calling Satanism a sect of Christianity, because the idea of Satan came from Christianity.

Saying “Satanisn is basically just organized, doctrinized atheism” is like saying “Peoples Temple (you know, the Jonestown mass suicide cult) is basically just organized, doctrinized Christianity”. It’s a bit misleading in its implications.

Also, you’re just speaking of LaVeyan Satanism, however there are also theistic Satanism groups as well. The theistic Satanism groups did come from Christianity, though they are far rarer than LaVeyan Satanism nowadays.

Anyways, LaVeyan Satanism is basically a religious philosophy that is also atheistic. The way you put it, it sounded like Satanism was atheism encoded into a doctrine and an organized religion (which isn’t really possible, since atheism just describes the absence of one belief).

You can’t have “organized and doctrinized Christianity” since that collection of terms is by definition, redundant.

You CAN have “organized and doctrinized atheism” since athiesm is by definition, neither. A religious philosophy that is also atheistic, is essentially organized and doctrinized atheism. Hope that helps, bro.

If you think you can’t have Christianity that is neither organized nor doctrinized, then you might want to check your history books. So no, it is not redundant. Furthermore, if something is redundant, then if you can have any part of it, then you can have all of it. Redundancy like that doesn’t make it impossible, it makes it *easier*. Finally, I was saying “X is Y”, and you’re telling me I can’t say “Y” because it’s redundant, which is just silly because this sentence can be redundant, repetitive, and say the same thing more than once and still be totally true.

Well, RLDS (who have changed their name so as not to be confused with LDS) were/was founded by Emma Smith, Joseph’s wife and took his eldest son as their prophet. They stopped the polygamy thing a lot sooner. Emma never liked it.
Like some other sects, upon the death of the original leader there weas a schism. Women can hold preisthood positions there, among other differences.

Cannot find file ”. Check to ensure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available.

C:\Joyce> FIND Tolerance

file found file C:\Joyce\humans\non_wasp\tolerance_?.exe

C:\Joyce run tolerance_?.exe

A problem has been detected and Joyce has been shut down to prevent damage to Her The problem seems to be caused by the following file: tolerance_?.exe Po If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen,restart your Joyce. If this screen appears again, follow these steps Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed f this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Joyce updates you might need If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed Ideas or Beliefs. Disable Religion memory options such as caching or shadowing If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your Joyce, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

[begin annoying geek]
You don’t need the ‘run’, just type the name of the executable to execute it.
In DOS, ‘find’ searches within files.
You’d use ‘dir’ instead.
You’d put an asterisk on both sides of your search string, because you’re looking for a file name that contains the string “tolerance” but you don’t know what other characters may be in the file name.
Asterisks (‘*’) are wildcards that match any sequence of characters.
Question marks are wildcards for a single character, so it wouldn’t be in the file name returned by the command.dir *tolerance* /s
[end annoying geek]

this is why put the words
“I apologize if there is any mistakes with the cmd run process”

I suppose you can’t please everyone glad i didn’t use a Linux based os if I am getting people who are slightly annoyed over a mistake over DOS cmd prompt imagine the Flak for make an error in a Linux cmd prompt pheww boy

Oh dear, I can only imagine. I have a few Linux elitist friends, and they are unforgiving. To them, a stable, long-term Windows 7 install is still inferior. I ask them how much fun they have when they want to play a game, or use industry standard software. “I was up all night compiling.”

Can we have a thread for people to *not* make intolerant comments about Mormonism? I may not agree with the theology of the religion, but the people seem pretty nice. Which is more than can be said for many atheists I’ve met.

My father has said that they tend to be very nice people and good sense of community. But like all people there are the dicks in a group. Ive only met one mormon family for sure. The parents were nice but their two sons were spoiled rotten.

I’ve met a couple. They were exactly like everybody else! Mindblowing!

Actually, it’s not that the Mormons I’ve met are so nice (although they were) or that I’m generally defensive of people who are members of obscure-relative-to-some religions (although I am, being a member of such a religion myself). It’s the hypocrisy of displaying prejudice against a group because of the stereotype that they are prejudiced.

And it’s not like no one here knows any individual Mormons–at least one regular on this board appears to be LDS.

What I said was that many atheists had been less than nice.
There are a lot of atheists, especially on the internets. “Many” can be less than nice and still have the majority be perfectly nice people. I was mostly just trying to make my point, well, slightly more pointed.

Oh no you don’t. You don’t get to back-peddle and pretend that others aren’t allowed to be offended at your offensive statement. You deliberately singled out a whole group and smeared them, and you’re trying to hide behind a weasel word to avoid taking responsibility for that.

If you’d said something about “many jews” or “many blacks”, would you still be trying to pretend that you didn’t say anything offensive? Or would you have the integrity to own up to the fact that you said something bad? Well, you’re no better off for having targeted atheists instead. So stop pretending that your hands are clean.

I said many I had met–I deliberately did not say most, and I deliberately specified my own personal experience. Specifically so that I wouldn’t have to have this conversation. I admit, I should have known better, considering it’s the internet.

But I still think my comment was fairly mild-toned–certainly, it was intended to be–and I definitely wouldn’t say it was a smear. If I had said that many Jews I’d met had been mean (which they haven’t by the way, especially if I try to talk religion with them), I would absolutely stand by the statement. In neither the hypothetical nor the actual was I “targeting” anybody.

I would point out, though, that you responded to my mild comment with sarcasm which, see the paragraphs above, didn’t even apply It was sarcasm for the sake of sarcasm, as far as I can tell.

Which does somewhat reinforce any conclusions I’ve drawn regarding the demeanor of atheists in discussion on religion.

You, too! I try not to let it be the “defining” principle of my life, exactly. It just, y’know, happens to be something I made the choice on. I’m still the same smart-alec I was before, I just make sure I drop the profanity from my vocabulary. (drinking/smoking wasn’t an issue beforehand anyway) 🙂

My 2nd cousin’s immediate family are Mormons, and you will not find a nicer bunch of people. Back when I was being bullied in middle school for being a nerd who upset the grading curve, he was the ONLY person who stood up for me.

As for the religion… from the POV of a non-religious person, it’s no sillier than any other.

I mean, how are you gonna compete with a religion that believes that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree?

I swear there was less hullabaloo over Mormons when ‘The Book of Mormon’ musical came out compared to now with Romney

By now I’m just kind of worn out defending my religion against all the misconceptions and outright lies lately. (Not talking about the comics mind you, I found the Shortpacked! Mario missionaries one funny.)

Curious to see where Willis goes with this character… Don’t remember her at all.

I guess this makes me number 5. First time posting, but I have been reading the comic (and comments) for several months now and loving it. I really like the how Joyce is developing as a character and is widening her boundaries.

I also find it hard to believe that so many people accept misinformation. How hard is it to google something or read the wikipedia article?

see this is why you shouldnt have social events before going to church. back in college when id go to church id just go and if i see someone there that i know we might go together next time. it also gells with my basic policy about never talking with people about their religion if i can avoid it because it never ends well

That’s funny, I talk with several people in my workplace about it. There’s a second godless heathen like myself, a adventist, two agnostics and a catholic. As long as I stay off the topic of evolution with the catholic we get along fine.

No, Islam. It’s one of three Abrahamic religions premised on much of the same source doctrine. Judaism doesn’t recognize Jesus as the messiah, and neither does Islam. Islam sees Mohammed as the latest in a long line of great prophets – including Jesus.

The key to understanding what Islam is all about lies to divorcing it from Sharia law. The two have, and very much can, exist in a state of mutual exclusivity. Oh yeah, and Mohammed spend the latter part of his life preaching equality and fair treatment – most people miss that memo.

My family is Catholic and I went to Catholic school until I got into college.
I’m not devout by any means, but after all that Catholic background I came to have a pretty good grasp of basic biblical events (taking into account the different editions of the bible). We talked about religion in my sociology class freshman year and I used my knowledge to contribute to the discussion. During our break one of my classmates tried to strike up a conversation with me about Christian values. I was uncomfortable but I humored her. She was an Evangelical of some sort (I don’t remember which). After a series of polite answers, she asked me what denomination I was. I informed her I was Roman Catholic. She looked flabbergasted. She then apologized and told me she had thought I was a christian.

Apparently I had missed a memo from the Pope about our change in status.

I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, but isn’t it absolutely adorable that she’s confused by someone who’s religious views differ from that of their family members? I mean she points it out as if she’s found some manner of contradiction.

I love Joyce. Of course, I’m Presbyterian and one of our doctrines of faith is that God determines who goes to Heaven irregardless of anything humans do. Ergo, worrying about what you do is really pointless.

John Calvin, our psychotic founder, would be horrified at how liberal we’ve become.

As someone who was raised in the LDS church, I can say that the people who were most abusive towards my religion were other Christians. :\ It was really super upsetting.
But! It means you got their interaction right. That TINY hesitation before she reveals that she is Mormon to a very outspoken Christian? It shows that she knows the rejection is coming, which how I always felt in the same situation.
I’m a little apprehensive about David introducing us to a Mormon character. But, that being said, I am also excited about it, because this is the first time I have ever seen an LDS character on any major webcomic that wasn’t there solely to insult missionaries. Yay for you!

heh. Can definitely understand the apprehension. The only time i’ve heard someone mention my religion before, they butchered it so badly that i was surprised he still had a teaching licence afterwords. (it wasnt a religion course, and he obviously wasn’t a gnostic).

That, or the hesitation was the quick internal debate over, “Do I say Mormon or LDS?” In my experience, the last line would have been “I’m, uh, LDS.” The first two panels of tomorrow’s strip would be just the two of them looking at each other with no dialogue, then in the third panel Agatha just says, “Mormon.” Then Joyce responds with, “That is awesome.”

It’s absolutely amazing that people can believe in such different things and still live in the same world with each other. ‘Course that sorta thing has started wars and resulted in folks killin’ each other as well, so I guess they can’t ALWAYS live in the same world together. Still, my main question growing up (and now, in many ways; though the question has changed a bit) is “How can so many people come up with so many different origins for existence, then become aware that everyone has different origins for existence, and STILL totally believe that thier own is the right one and everyone else is believing in the wrong one?”

Actually, no.
I mean, obviously it does make sense, but it’s not true.
It’s perfectly possible to believe that something is wrong, but find yourself unable of stopping believing it. Also viceversa, believe that a belief is right but failing to believe it.
I can only imagine how frustrating that’d be. Funny things, our brains.

I used to have daydreams about religious wars in America, usually centered on the fact that there’s a megachurch in my town and three churches of three different denominations within mortar range of each other and the megachurch.

That… may be a Middle Eastern thing. I dunno? But my religion pretty much says that ALL gods are real; we just don’t follow other ones because we also believe that our gods are also our ancestors and that they’re primarily interested in their own descendents.

This leads to debates over whether you have to have the right ethnic background to follow our gods, or (as everyone I know thinks) hey, if a god has called you, who am I to say you nay?

But I like that world-view, that all the gods are real. That means that all the wonderful origin stories, from the world being sung into existence back in the Australian Dreamtime, to the African goddess who was interrupted while she was baking people out of clay, so some were nicely toasted and finished baking, while others were only partly done or not baked yet at all and all pasty and pale, to Raven finding the Haida hiding in an oyster shell, are all true.

“Real”? Yeah, probably not, unless the stories also mention Australopicethus. -es? -ii? Anyways, not real But true, which makes the world a very cool place to be in.

Oh, so many sore toes from all the stepping on! I am gonna go ahead and take the humorous route and suggest Joyce read http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html which is a funny and sparkly gif filled blog about the ties of Mormonism and Twilight.

A former strict Mormon on my course at university told me that he was raised to believe that all the other planets in our solar system had contained prior versions of the human race which had already undergone their day of judgement.

I’d like to say that that wasn’t ever taught to him in church, but the rather ad-hoc manner in which sunday school teachers are selected, with no screening and no training, leaves open the possibility that some loon got his hands on some impressionable minds. I’m moderately confident that nothing the likes of that ever got into the printed lesson manuals, anyway.

As for what he was taught at home, who the hell knows. People can believe anything they want and teach it to their kids, and I’ve observed that Mormons can keep up with the best of them at reading the scriptures and “interpreting” them to mean anything they want them to.

All that said, I’ve heard it asserted (in mormon sunday school) that there are myriad other planets out there populated by intelligent beings with souls that want saving. However we earthlings are the only ones who got a Jesus, whose actions then saved everybody anywhere. Why we got so lucky is never addressed, and I can only wonder at the success rate of the Mormonism-analogue religions on planets who never even had Christianity and who are literally proselytizing Space Jesus. Oh, and none of these places have undergone judgement either, since just like Jesus there’s only one judgement too.

Anyway, I suppose if he heard about this and got it really, really confused, that would lead him to believe that Jupiter was once inhabited (despite not really having a solid surface). That or *you* got it confused when you heard him talking about. Or maybe this was some crazy person’s idea, or maybe he was joking. Who knows?

It could be that he got it wrong, but I’m more inclined to believe the crazy sunday school teacher myself. I had a few of them when I was growing up. In third grade my sunday school teacher tried to convince the whole class that Matt Groening was a tool of the devil and quite possibly the anti-christ. Using puppets.

I had a mormon friend in middle school that used to say some weird things that I can’t say for sure aren’t part of the dogma, but always sounded like crazy sunday school rambling to me. One of which being that mormons get christian servants in the afterlife.

Hell, I had a seminary teacher who was teaching the exact date that Christ would arrive and where the earthquake retribution for Matt Groening would hit. For a while I had a sunday school teacher who insisted on disregarding the scriptures entirely when he taught. They were venturing pretty far out of the curriculum to be sure.

Sometimes somebody’s pet theory will just become really popular locally too. For example I’ve never been able to get a straight answer on where it says that in the afterlife our blood will be replaced with light, and I’m pretty sure the church as a whole doesn’t believe it, but it’s certainly something I heard a lot growing up and it’s as a child it’s hard to tell when people are just playing at armchair theology rather than discussing anything viewed as a concrete truth.

Oh Joyce… I’m kinda surprised by her reactions to the idea of anyone being a religion that is not her own. After all, she did intentionally go to a non-Christian college, where she would have to make friends and interact with people of various other faiths. I would have thought she’d have prepared herself a bit more. 😛

No matter how hard you prepare yourself, you can’t know the unknowable. She grew up in an environment where everyone was the same faith, and as she was homeschooled, she didn’t really have much reason to get out and meet other people of other faiths. She pretty much dove headfirst into the middle of the Atlantic to learn how to swim. A noble gesture, to be sure, to intentionally go to a college with a melting pot of people and faiths, but more than a little bit overwhelming.

Adding to the above, she may also have had an unconsciously skewed perspective on the religious demographics of the world at large. that is to say, while she obviously was unsurprised by the possibility of meeting a catholic, and meeting a Jew didn’t slow her down any, she might have a vague notion that there are no muslims, hindus, shinto, etc in america, and that the Mormons are only to be found in Utah and its bordering states.

People who call religions cults are intolerant and possibly a little bit spiteful. I’m agnostic, but I accept other religions as valid dogma so long as they’re not shoving their views down my throat. The few super-strict-omg-wtf-bbq religious people I’ve met that did that got a stern talking to about not waving their faith like a dick (double meaning intended). Faith is a fine thing. Pride in your faith is a fine thing. Slapping down faith because you don’t have any is a dick move.

Alternately, people the people calling religions “cults” might be using the word in an actually meaningful way: to describe a member of a class of extremely insular religions that isolate their followers from the outside world and/or try to hide aspects of their theology from the outside world. From this use of the word comes the adjective “cultish”, which describes anything exhibiting these secretive and exclusive tendencies.

For example, the old gnostic cults that were contemporary with the start of Christianity were in fact cults, by the above definition. Christianity itself was also a cult in the beginning (and an apocalyptic cult to boot). In modern days, Scientology could reasonably called a cult. Mormonism certainly qualified in its early, lawless days; nowadays it has shed most of its isolationism, though it’s attempts at secrecy regarding its temple rituals retain a certain cultish flavor.

All that said, anybody who calls Christianity-as-a-whole or any other open, public religion a cult is clearly just using the word as a meaningless pejorative and should be criticized for their bastardization of the language if nothing else.

I will consider any insular groups that indoctrinate children as cults. Yes, as a religion gets large enough, it becomes hard to insulate, but the attempts are what matters. Growing up I was taught in sermons that I wasn’t to associate with non-believers except to attempt a conversion, and then if they didn’t convert I was supposed to never associate with them again. That wasn’t even sunday school, it was a regular sermon at the local mega church. I had to pretend my friends were christians and coach them before letting them into my house, lest my dad discover their heathen beliefs, or lack there of.

To me all religions are cults in their base form, not all churches and small groups may still act cultish, but that doesn’t stop the religion itself as a whole from being cultish. The difference to me is just semantics.

As an atheist from a mostly catholic (with a side of “Just don’t care” like Billie) country, sort of an outsider, it never quite ceases to surprise me how much bad blood can run between Christian denominations.

One would think for people that worship the same deity and believe in the divinity of the same Jesus and take the gospels as, well, gospels, this kind of reaction would be saved for Muslims, Buddhists, Confucianists, Atheists and Deists. You know, people who have very different ideas about spirituality.

I briefly dated a Mormon girl once. Apparently all her Mormon friends (which was all of her friends) told her they’d have nothing to do with her and they’d make sure she wasn’t welcome at church any more if she continued to date a non-Mormon. I’ve always kind of wondered how common that is for Mormons, and if that was just a particularly isolationist group…

It should be noted that I DID tell them that I did believe in God but that I think he’s kind of a dick, and that I do all my charity work for the sake of my fellow man instead of for God, and that I donate plenty to the Red Cross but had no interest in giving a cent to any church. So I did sort of antagonize them, I guess.

Sadly, yeah, that was a particularly snobbish, clique-ish group. Sometimes you can get groups of them that form these little “bubbles”, and they try to keep the “outside world” out. It’s rather disturbing to see people do that, LDS church or not. =\

It certainly varies from group to group. It’s an interesting balance, because there’s nothing that says you can’t date a nonmormon so long as you don’t do any of the sexual nonos, but there can be a bit of a mentality that they won’t understand that or at that you’ll find you have little in common with a nonmormon.

Plus, as much as dating is fine, temple marriage is necessary to achieve exaltation, and nonmormons aren’t allowed in the temple. So only marriage with another mormon is recognized by God or will get you into the best afterlife.

Now, obviously it’s not like everyone always marries within the church either, and within my own life people have at least been accepting of that. It happens. No shame in it. However it’s a fine balance, since at the end of the day everyone does still want you to marry another mormon, and the lack of encouragement when you leave that dating circle if palpable.

Plus, there are always judgmental people and some people disagree on the ordering of priorities. For example when my grandpa converted he left his wife and children and immediately married a new woman. They hate eachother, and he still talks about his first wife as his one true love. Extremists definitely exist.

All in all, it sounds like what you saw was leaning more towards the insular side of things than is standard, but that’s not to say a lesser degree of it isn’t often present.

I love the look on Joyce’s face. I have had people give me that look before when I say I am Mormon and they try to censor themselves. Her reaction is actually pretty calm. I had one guy tell me straight out that, his exact words, ” you’re going to Hell”. Still laugh about him though he was a high schooler at a military high school/ college combo and he obviously was like Joyce in that he had lived a very isolated life.

I sure wish my history teacher could see all these comments (and in specific this comic). Every day she makes one nasty comment about Catholics and seems to think it’s okay because “she’s talking about history.” It’s really offensive and extremely unprofessional for a college professor and everything. :/

Oh man, please tell me Agatha does the “Ask a Mormon” the IU mormons used to set up a table somewhere on campus with a sign that said “Ask me anything”. I think they don’t do it as much anymore, because they were getting heckled by everyone, but it was pretty fun when they did it.